Extras! 16 July 2014

Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

Hey, guys! Have you seen that awesome new Saving Private Ryan trailer? It makes that Expendables 3 trailer look so lame and non-awesome in comparison. This Spielberg guys looks like he could be an awesome balls to the wall action director! Awesome!

When you call your movie Transformers, it’s probably a good idea to have it be about Transformers instead of annoying humans. Michael Bay seemingly never got this memo. Luckily for us though, director Matt Reeves did, and so Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is actually mostly about, you know, apes. But according to Reeves, it seems that the folks at Fox had initially been on the same mailing list as Bay.

“When I came in to meet with the studio, when they approached me about doing the film, they pitched me the story that they had… and it didn’t center on Caesar. It started in the post-apocalyptic city… and there was this story in the city and the apes were actually very articulate, they already could speak very, very easily. I was like, ‘Oh… Well I don’t think this is the movie for me… This is just not what I would do.’

“And so they said, ‘What would you do?’ And I said, ‘I think you need to keep on with what you did. You created, in Rise, a hero in Caesar, and if I were going to do this movie I’d want it to be Caesar’s movie through and through. I think the secret of Rise is that it ends up being an ape’s point-of-view movie. I think now that you’ve done that, you’ve earned it, this movie should declare itself right from the beginning as being his movie. It should start and end on him.”

Poster of the Day: The Birds

Before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were four butt-kicking heroes on the half shell who do a mean Jacob Zuma impersonation, they were four talented white dudes who painted, sculpted and invented stuff all over Italy hundreds of years ago. Now it’s time to finally decide which version is better.

Pierce Brosnan is going on a crusade, and no it’s not to try and convince people that he can actually sing. The ex-Mr Bond… James Bond’s production company Irish Dream Time will be teaming up with Spike TV for a new event series titled The Crusaders. As you may have guessed, The Crusaders “takes place during the Third Crusade, after the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin’s armies, and centers on two very different knights who journey from Scotland to the Holy Land for very different reasons. There, bound together in the crucible that is war, politics and betrayal, they will encounter and be forced to overcome, among others, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, the Hashshashin and ultimately their own personal demons.”

Brosnan will executive produce alongside Oscar winning Gladiator screenwriter David Franzoni (Gladiator), who will also be on writing duties with Predators scribe Michael Finch.

And because your day is not complete without a blue-faced alien badass in a hoodie, sporting a giant freaking space-hammer, here are some newly released pics from Marvel’s Guardian of the Galaxy.

You would think that with his body of work, Andy Serkis would be the poster boy for movie VFX. But there’s a bit of a fracas brewing between the man who brought such digital marvels like Caesar the ape and Gollum to life, and the people whose job it is to actually make him look good. It all started when Serkis was quoted in an interview as saying that visual effects artists “absolutely copy (the actor’s motion captured performance) to the letter, to the point in effect what they are doing is painting digital makeup onto actors’ performances.”

Although Marvel may once again be in possession of the film rights to the Punisher, I have a feeling it’s going to be a while until we get to see Frank Castle on screen again, and probably also nowhere near as uncomprisingly violent as he needs to be. Luckily for us, we have the folks at Machinima who as part of their Super Hero Beat Down series have put together this kickass and gory Red Hood vs Punisher vid.

If you think that Seth MacFarlane’s entire career is is making unimaginative fart jokes, then you just got some very vocal supports. MacFarlane is being sued by Bengal Mangle Productions, which claims that the titular animated bear in the funnyman’s $550 million grossing comedy hit Ted, is actually a ripoff of their own creation, Charlie, who stars in a web series of his own.

They claim that not only are the two animated bears very similar in appearance, but that “both Charlie and Ted reside in a substantially similar environment, including that both Charlie and Ted spend a significant amount of time sitting on a living room couch with a beer and/or cigarette in hand. Charlie and Ted each have a substantially similar persona, verbal tone, verbal delivery, dialogue, and attitude.” And they go on to say that various scenes from their webseries were lifted wholesale, including “showing a woman all the lewd acts he wants to perform with her; using violence to get his point across to John; talking to Nora Jones about their sexual history, and making fat jokes even when his life is in danger.”

Those are very specific points to be copied, so this may not look good for MacFarlane.

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to [email protected]

A man of many passions - but very little sleep - I've been geeking out over movies, video games, comics, books, anime, TV series and lemon meringues as far back as I can remember. So show up for the geeky insight, stay for the delicious pastries.

Competitions

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is apparating into cinemas today, which should get all the Potterheads out there screaming in delight. And we're adding to that excitement by revealing the five winners of magical movie hampers worth R2000 each.

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